The use of videoconferencing has steadily increased over the years. It is not only environmental friendly but also saves valuable time for the participating conferees, that otherwise would have to travel from a remote location. Thus, videoconferencing has substituted many “real life” meetings due to said advantages.
This trend has further accelerated since it is commonplace with dedicated conference rooms in the corporate world. The high value of a comfortable and well functioning conference setting is appreciated, and these premises are relatively spacious and always well-equipped both in terms of service, technology and design. Videoconferencing may be set up with an external party, but more importantly, the external party may be participating on site. Therefore it is important to be able to convey the “look and feel” of the corporate identity regardless of whether the external party is talking to a corporate officer on site or a corporate officer at a remote site. Despite this fact, previous attempts to create videoconferencing systems fail to exploit the advantages of being able to realistically render the remote environment along with the remote conferee, this even though some solutions actually do acknowledge the advantage of the remote conferees appearing in a standardized setting.
One of the biggest disadvantages with the videoconference systems on the market today is the lack of ability to create “real” eye contact between the conferees. To be able to create “true” eye contact is very important in order to eliminate the irritation and frustration that otherwise may occur if an important negotiation is to be performed. This is due to a so called false eye-contact phenomenon, which is illustrated in FIG. 1. In FIG. 1 conferees A, B, and C on the left hand side are in videoconference with conferees D, E and F on the right hand side. Each side has a display surface along the interface 10. Behind each display is a camera. When conferee D watches conferee A on the display conferee A will experience that conferee D is watching somewhat to the left of him/her. Furthermore if E, or for that matter D or F, look at B, i.e. straight towards the camera, everybody on he left hand side will perceive E as looking straight at him/her personally. If E then asks a question, A, B and C will try to answer all at once. Thus, in order to be able carry out sensitive negotiations in a videoconference setting rather than in “real life” it is important to eliminate the eye contact phenomenon.
One solution to the above problem is shown in the PCT-Application SE2011/050064 with the same applicant as the present invention. Said application is hereby incorporated by reference. In this application there is disclosed a studio, a studio configuration and a calibration method for life-size videoconferencing. The main purpose is to create standardized studios equipped with a standardized calibrated videoconference system. By doing so it is possible to show the entire local conference space of the studio to scale and without aberrations to a remote conference space. Thus, a local conferee may establish eye contact and register the body movements of a remote conferee.
In one embodiment of this system mirrors are used to increase the optical distance from the local conference space to the camera used to record said conference space. This is an important feature of the videoconference system since an increased distance will reduce the parallax angle. This may best be described by thinking of a close up image of a person's face. In such an image the nose of the person will look disproportional big compared to the rest of the face. This is a well known problem. In a studio or a conference room were space is almost always limited this problem is not easy to correct.
Also WO 2008/036931 discloses a videoconference using a two-way mirror to create an optical path that is longer than the physical distance between a user and a camera.
The use of mirrors is one solution to the problem, but may be very complicated if one is to use more than one mirror in order to further increase the optical distance. Thus there is a need for a videoconference system that despite limited space is able to further reduce the parallax error.